Variety: Vowelless Crossword

VOWELLESS CROSSWORD — I don’t think I’d ever tried one of these before; they don’t run often, maybe one a year. It looks so much like a regular puzzle — standard 15 x 15 grid and ordinary cluing — that if someone was looking over your shoulder as you solved (and didn’t notice the huge title) they’d think you were nuts.

And it sort of made me nuts! At first, I misremembered this interesting reading comprehension fact that had recirculated a few years ago and lodged in my memory — I thought that, without vowels, the words would still pretty much read sensibly. But even after sussing out a couple of long entries (“I’d like to buy a vowel,” at 19A, DLKTBVWL; “Xerox machines” at 37D, XRXMCHNS) I still found the look of the puzzle confusing.

I thought it might be reminiscent of shorthand, but most schools of shorthand manipulate vowels in different ways; one, “Abjad,” sounded promising, and in researching that family a bit I found out something that I’d never known, namely that Egyptian hieroglyphics are considered to be written only as consonants.

After getting sidetracked by this and other stuff, somehow, my mind adjusted to the lack of vowels and I plowed through. Mr. Charlson’s entries were great — he made ample use of high-scoring Scrabble letters, giving us that crazy 2 x 2 square of Zs on the upper left (which included the adorable NZZL) and QCKBRWNFX, which was really just brilliant. I also loved XTRVGNZS at 7D, SLNTX at 48D, definitely BSSCLF at 13D for its cleverness, and MDWF at 52D.

I erred in several spots: At 23D, I had “hot lotion” as an idea (which sounds a little squicky, now that I think about it) instead of “hot stone” or HTSTN. I also had PMPHLTS (“pamphlets”) instead of HNDBLLS (“handbills”) at 59A. All in all, though, as long as I had the patience the cluing was skillful enough to be challenging but not inscrutable. I’d definitely do more of these, as oddball as the experience was.